Biden: Global Cop Through “Alliances”

Vice President Joseph Biden told attendees of the 45th annual Munich Security Conference that President Obama plans to have the United States continue its role as global cop under “strong partnerships.” Speaking for the new administration, Biden explained in his February 7 address that those partnerships include the NATO alliance (a United Nations regional affiliate). He urged that NATO take on a global role and "act in and out of area more effectively."

According to Biden: “The threats we face have no respect for borders. No single country, no matter how powerful, can best meet these threats alone. We believe international alliances and organizations do not diminish America's power — we believe they help advance our collective security, economic interests and our values.”

Biden continued:

So we’ll engage.... America needs the world, just as I believe the world needs America. But we say to our friends that the alliances, treaties and international organizations we build must be credible and they must be effective. That requires a common commitment not only to listen and live by the rules, but to enforce the rules when they are, in fact, clearly violated.

In Biden’s original prepared remarks, the word “enforce” was underlined. A global cop, this time managed by “alliances, treaties and international organizations” with enforcement powers, is what the Obama administration has in mind for America. Biden's remarks make clear that the Obama administration is not opposed to the United States policing the world; the administration is instead opposed to the United States policing the world unilaterally — outside the framework of international rules. In the case of NATO, those rules include treating an attack on any member of the military alliance as if it were an attack on our own country.

In his Munich speech, Biden also called for transferring the debt of impoverished third world nations to the debt of the United States. “Our physical security and our economic security are indivisible,” Bidens said about Obama’s plan to add the debt of the world to the ever-increasing U.S. national debt: “Our administration has set an ambitious goal to increase foreign assistance, to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015, to help eliminate the global educational deficit, and to cancel the debt of the world's poorest countries.”

Photo: AP Images

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